The Dead and the Dark(8)

“Location scouting.” Logan inspected her nailbeds. “For the show.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what he told me. I thought you might know something else.” Gracia smiled, warm and bright. “It doesn’t matter anyway. People might not be happy to see the three of you here, but I—”

Logan squinted. “What do you mean they’re not happy?”

She thought of the crowd at the funeral, gathered like crows at the edge of the hill, silently staring down at her. It’d been so eerie she almost thought she’d imagined it. They’d looked at her like she was trespassing. Like she’d stumbled into their town from outer space.

Gracia waved a hand. “I have been wishing your dad would come home since the day he left.”

Dad. Singular.

Maybe Brandon was a mystery to Gracia, too. If she’d hoped to get the inside scoop, she’d picked the wrong source. Logan had spent years trying to get some kernel of truth out of Brandon. Gracia wasn’t the only one who found it easier to talk to Alejo.

“Can I ask you something?” Logan asked. “I saw a funeral on the way into town.”

“Oh.” Gracia’s voice was sharp. “It’s their service for the Granger boy.”

Logan perked up. When she’d asked Alejo what exactly they were investigating in Snakebite, his answers were vague at best. The usual stuff—dead crops, cold spots, strange noises. A dead kid was the kind of creepy small-town thing he should’ve mentioned. She leaned forward and propped her chin on her fist. “How’d he die?”

“He’s not dead, just missing,” Gracia clarified. “He probably ran away. Anyone you ask around here will tell you he was a good boy. They don’t think he would leave like that. The group he ran with, though … they’re not nice kids. They’re all rotten.”

Logan was silent.

“I hope he’s alive,” Gracia continued, “but a part of me hopes they don’t find him. If they finally lose one of those kids, maybe they’ll stop acting so high and mighty.”

Logan blinked. Gracia’s expression wasn’t warm anymore, but Logan couldn’t figure out what it was. The way the people at the vigil had looked at her like she was arriving by UFO, and now this strange, whispered blood feud. Something was wrong here, and not in the usual small-town way.

Outside, Logan could just make out her fathers’ voices.

“You want my advice? Ease up on the jokes.”

“You always joke with her. Why can’t I?”

Logan turned away from Gracia and peered out the window through the blinds. Alejo pulled a suitcase from the back seat of the minivan and tossed it onto the pile in the parking lot. Brandon stood next to him, fiddling with the latch on one of his bags. His expression was hard to parse—maybe embarrassment, maybe discomfort. He looked more out of place than usual, like the sun and the hills and the wide-open sky somehow disagreed with him.

Alejo paused and wiped sweat from his brow. “It’s just the three of us now. Just family. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

“You know I was never good at that.”

“At what?”

“Being okay.”

Alejo laughed, short and tense.

Gracia stood at Logan’s back and put a hand on her shoulder, silver-gray brow furrowed as she watched Brandon unpack. She watched him like the crowd at the vigil watched them. Like she wanted to disassemble him just to study his parts.

Alejo spotted them through the blinds and rolled his eyes. “What was it you said back home? If you’re gonna just stand there, can you at least help?”

“We’re just catching up, Chacho,” Gracia said loud enough for Alejo to hear. She gave Logan a single squeeze on the shoulder and, quieter, said, “Go help your dads. And if you ever need to talk, remember I’m in room two.”

Logan swallowed and nodded. Gracia left the motel room and Logan was alone with nothing but the sputtering air conditioner and the quiet. Just like every other motel on the road, she would get used to these walls. She would get used to the silence, to the absurd heat, to the loneliness. But there was something different about Snakebite. She’d spent years tuning out Brandon and Alejo’s “mysteries,” but something about this one tugged at her. It begged her to dig deeper.

It didn’t matter. Even if there was something different in this town—something wrong—it was only a few months. She’d spent years enduring places like this.

This wasn’t a home. It was just another place, and she would survive it.





4


Into the Wild Abyss


Ashley Barton had lost people before.

When Tristan first disappeared, all of Snakebite thought they were detectives. Everyone could’ve sworn they’d just seen him; Mrs. Alberts from homeroom saw him down at the lake, Debbie who ran the Laundromat said Tristan came and picked up his mom’s linens just that afternoon, Jared from the gas station drove past Tristan playing catch with his little brother. All forty-three students at Owyhee County High joined the search parties. Finding Tristan seemed inevitable to Ashley at first—there were only so many places a kid from Snakebite could go. Up until a month ago, the search parties had been going strong. But once Sheriff Paris declared the case cold, the parties began to dwindle. Now, a week after the vigil with no new leads, Ashley doubted this could go on much longer. Soon, she’d be the only one left looking. She tried to stamp down the desperation in her chest.